Statement from SURJ Poor and Working-Class Working Group

We are the poor and working class organizers of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). We are -- our people are -- the ones you call "ignorant, uneducated, rednecks, hillbillies, low class, white trash, country fools." We are here to resist racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, and all that the Trump administration will bring.

We will stay rooted in the leadership of people of color -- women, queer and trans, immigrants, poor, working class, rural, disabled -- who are organizing across the country. We will stay rooted in our shared values of community, culture, family, justice, and dignity.

Our communities face many threats: hunger, houselessness, crumbling infrastructure, long-unmet medical issues, addiction, low wages, violence. Trump and the 1% will not meet these needs. We need jobs, housing, healthcare, roads, transportation, and schools that are controlled by the communities that use them. Trump and the 1% will profit off of our pain and leave us with the same struggles we have experienced before. The only way forward is to join the movement led by poor and working-class people of color.

The pain and outrage that our people have felt has been exploited by Trump and the 1%.

As poor and working-class people, we know that one of the strongest tools we have is our community. We will not align with the divide-and-conquer tactics of the Trump administration -- which will offer empty promises of jobs to us while threatening our Latinx, Muslim, Arab, Black, and Indigenous neighbors.

If there's one thing we are good at, it is making things grow in hard and desperate times. We will continue to organize at our jobs, in our neighborhoods, in our places of worship, at school, at the grocery store, in childcare centers, at food banks, and everywhere we gather to change the narrative of hate that we are facing. We will continue to organize with Black lives, Latinx lives, Muslim lives, Arab lives, and Indigenous lives at the center. We are building momentum, and we are powerful, and we will resist both Trump and Trumpism.